France Album Sales: Madonna
True Blue (1986) Era
Getting bigger and bigger, the climb of Madonna to the top was definitely not going to be stopped by the release of True Blue. The era started with lead single Live To Tell, which was one more Top 10 hit for the singer, peaking at #6. Barely two months later, following hit Papa Don’t Preach came out just before the album.
Papa Don’t Preach entered the Top 10 the week Live To Tell left it showing the incredible strength of Madonna, especially considering how difficult it was for foreign artists to get Top 10 hits. That single went on to peak at #3.
The album True Blue started just as strong, hitting #2 for three consecutive monthly charts. During the first two of them, the album would have been #1 if compilations were already excluded at that time. The title track then took over, reaching #6 during the Christmas week. Thanks to those back to back to back hits, the album performed 2-2-2-4-5-6 during the last six months of the year, selling a calculated 427,000 units and reaching Platinum status. Worldwide, the album sold over 10 million copies for the year while the previous two were close to 18 million units combined, 5 million for Madonna and 13 million for Like A Virgin.
From 1987, charts started to be published on a bi-weekly basis in France. The fourth single Open Your Heart only reached #24, failing to reproduce the success of its predecessors. The album was in and out the Top 10 but it was still fairly relevant.
From May, the last single La Isla Bonita started to get heavy rotation on radio. In a heavily competitive summer, the song was so big that it still managed 3 weeks at #1 and 17 weeks in the Top 5 despite more than 500,000 units already sold of the album. Things got even better when Madonna came to France in August to perform a monster show at Parc De Sceaux close to Paris in front of 130,000 people. If the La Isla Bonita smash had already put True Blue inside the Top 3, this concert shot it to #1 for the very first time since its release. Heavy shipments sent the album up to 800,000 copies.
The hype wasn’t only about La Isla Bonita, True Blue and the concert as a few weeks earlier a fresh new release came out.
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
- La Isla Bonita – 22,487,000
- Papa Don’t Preach – 11,632,000
- Open Your Heart – 6,657,000